


why would somebody do this on purpose

by pippuri



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, aka i make up things about sam's past and make myself emotional, what is the point of writing fic if it is Not completely self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27322279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pippuri/pseuds/pippuri
Summary: it's like there’s something in you, something slippery and dark, reminding you that this is all pretend. that every second you spend, happy and safe, you’ll have to repent for in the future. 'this isn’t your life,' it whispers to you in your dreams, 'you’re meant for so much more.'//pre-show and very early s1, sam and running away and praying
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	why would somebody do this on purpose

**Author's Note:**

> sam character study that is 100% made up but i had a great time doing it :))

Three days before your eleventh birthday, you run away from home, although ‘home’ would be a stretch for the dingy motel room Dad paid for by the night. It was the fifth time Child Protective Services have been called on you in as many months, and Dad had stopped letting Dean go with him on hunts. 

Dean had laughed when his English teacher pulled him aside to gently ask about the bruising on his arms, and when he told the story to you and Dad later that night, still laughing, Dad had yelled at him for what felt like hours. You locked yourself in the bathroom with your math homework, focusing so hard on the area formulas of different polygons, you can pretend that you can’t hear Dad. 

He’s gone before you wake up again, leaving only a note explaining he’s chasing a lead in upstate New York and sixty bucks. Dean looks at the money, and you feel a sick feeling build in your stomach. When you were a kid, sixty dollars felt like a fortune, but you’re older now. You know if Dad doesn’t come home soon, Dean will be calling your classmates' parents and asking if you can have a playdate with them after school, maybe stay for dinner. 

CPS shows up after you get home from school, and are doing your Spanish homework in bed. Dean’s watching reruns of some soap opera that he pretends he doesn’t understand or like, but you know he’s already seen this episode three times. It’s the same woman who came last time because of Dean’s “chronic truancy” and a man you’ve never seen before. The lady takes you outside, and buys you a coke from the vending machine while the man stays behind to talk with Dean. 

She’s smiley, but in the same way the nurse was when you broke your arm during a routine hunt gone wrong Dad had let you go on last August. Like she thinks you’re lying, and by buying you a coke you’ll tell her the truth. Of course you won’t — Dad had hammered that into you. 

“Sammy …” She starts, but you glare at her. 

“Sam,” you say. 

“Sam,” she agrees. “Do you know what happened to your brother? Did he maybe get in a fight at school or …?”  
You shrug. 

She bends down so she’s looking you in the eyes. “You can tell me, Sam. Even if someone told you not to say anything, it’s my job to make sure you’re okay. We just want you and your brother to be safe.”

If you were Dean, you would laugh at that -- you’re the ones who keep _her_ safe. Instead, you just shrug again. 

“He got into fights at our old school,” you offer. “Can I get some Twizzlers?” She gives you a few dollars, and lets you sit on the bench outside of the room, drinking your coke through the twizzlers, while she goes in to talk with Dean and the man. 

/

When they finally leave, Dean’s quiet, quieter than he should be. He tosses you a Cup Noodle from the convenience store bag, and gives you a forced smile. 

“Maybe we can have pizza tomorrow night,” he says, and waves you off when you offer to make his noodles too. 

“I’ll eat after my show is over,” and he gestures to the TV. Silently, you eat your noodles and watch _Days of Our Lives_ with him. He takes a bite of your dinner, and you give him the rest of the twizzlers. 

Sometimes, you think Dean is trying to protect you from things you’ve understood your whole life. 

/

You wake up suddenly at 1am — Dean must have put you in your own bed while you were sleeping. He’s got his back to you, and the TV is playing infomercials on mute. 

“Yeah, John’s kid,” you hear him whisper into the phone. “We’re in Pennsylvania, and I just really need to talk to him, and I remember he said you were in Buffalo for a case …” His voice trails off, and you squeeze your eyes shut. 

“Oh,” he says. “Um, if you can get in touch with him, can you tell him I called? Tell him the cops were here again, and I didn’t know what to do, and they’re threatening to take Sammy away. Tell him he needs to come home.” 

You can’t sleep for the rest of the night. Dean doesn’t either, you don’t think, not until the infomercials crackled into the 5am news. You silently roll out of bed, pack your homework and clothes into a backpack. 

You figure, if you’re not there when the lady and her fake smile come back, they can’t take you away anywhere. If you could just _hide_ until Dad gets home, it’ll be okay. 

/

Of course, it isn’t. Dean finds you in the public library, and he’s somewhere between furious and relieved. 

“Jesus Christ, Sam. What do you think I was gonna say when she showed back up? ‘Oh, my fifth grade brother? Yeah, he never came home from school.’ This is why we don’t fucking tell you anything.”

It echoes in your head, over and over, _this is why we don’t fucking tell you anything_ , even after Dean apologizes for yelling, and buys you a burger and a milkshake. It’s like Dad had possessed Dean, made him say that to you, made him yell at you like you hear him yell at Dean. You flick some salt that you spilled on your fries at Dean, and he just looks at you like you’re insane. 

/ 

You don’t get out of the habit of running away. It drives Dean, and then Jess insane. You’re not even really sure why you’re running away from Stanford, away from everything you had ever dreamed of. 

It’s like there’s something in you, something slippery and dark, reminding you that this is all pretend. That every second you spend, happy and safe, you’ll have to repent for in the future. _This isn’t your life_ , it whispers to you in your dreams, _you’re meant for so much more_. 

You don’t _want_ more though. You want this — all-nighters in the law building, and breakfast with Jess on sunny Saturday mornings, and your work study job in the library; you want the future Jess whispers into your ear late at night: you at law school and her doing her PhD, a dog, an apartment (a _home_ ) of your own, Christmas cards, shelves full of knick knacks. 

Three days before you get your LSAT results back, you leave a note for Jess, and end up somewhere deep in Yosemite. The dreams are coming more often now. You close your eyes, and you’re somewhere dark and _evil_ ; you’re watching Dean torn to pieces; you’re feeling the sun and the wind as you fall; you’re lying in bed, and Jess erupts into flames above you. 

That’s a new one. You can hear Jess’s psych major jargon comforting you, that you’re reliving the death of your mother, that sometimes memories take decades to resurface, that you’re still working through an unbelievable amount of childhood trauma (and she doesn’t know the half of it). 

You brought your textbooks with you. You spend five days in the woods, doing nothing but retranslating your secondhand version of the Peshitta. Usually translation numbs you to the world, your mind just a conduit between authors, a vessel for the words to live in and transform but today -- today you can’t grasp at the verses anymore. You can’t feel their holiness anymore, not when you close your eyes and Jess is burning, burning, burning. 

If you were your dad, you’d be drunk by now. But you’re not, and you won’t ever be, so you close your eyes and pray to whoever’s listening: _please protect Dad, and please protect Dean, and please, please, please protect Jess_. 

/

No one, it seems, is listening. 

/ 

You bury Jess on a Thursday. It’s sunny, which feels cosmically wrong, and her mom looks at you like she hates you for surviving. _It should have been me,_ you want to tell her, _I should have saved her._

Her parents insist on burying her in her prom dress, which you know she would find funny and embarrassing at the same time. It’s long, and white, and if you squint it could be a wedding dress. You don’t though. You lock that away in a forgotten corner of your mind, lock away the ring you had been looking at, and the promises of forever, and everything that made you someone John Winchester would have been disappointed in. 

/

You know there is something atomically _wrong_ with you. You know it every time you wake up in the middle of the night, a memory of somewhere evil still clouding your vision, and: if Jess died, maybe then this too is real. You dream of it almost every night: a place that feels heavy, and dark, and endless. Part of you knows you’re dreaming of your own death; on some level, you know there is something cursed inside you, something that is as _you_ as your bones and your blood and your heart. 

Still: you wake up in the middle of the night, close your eyes, and pray until you fall back asleep, your death coloring every dream. 

_Please protect Dad, and please protect Dean, and please forgive me for whatever I’m going to become._


End file.
